You don’t need to be a big football fan to know that Paul Pogba and Jose Mourinho never saw eye to eye.

Recent blips aside, Manchester United have enjoyed a rebirth under Ole Gunnar Solskjær, and Pogba has starred alongside the likes of Marcus Rashford and Luke Shaw, who were also sidelined under Mourinho’s reign.

The drama between the Portuguese manager and Pogba really came to a head in September of last year, when footage from the training ground showed a frosty exchange between the two.

Since leaving the club back in mid-December, Mourinho has remained mostly silent about that relationship, but now he’s done mincing his words.

Whilst running a coaching seminar in Portugal on Monday, Mourinho mocked Pogba by calling him “His Excellency”, adding that he risked being fired if he didn’t handle the record signing appropriately.

This from the Telegraph:

“We would play a team that was 30 kilometres from Manchester and a player asked me if after the game he could return to Manchester without the team and go on his own,” Mourinho explained, in reference to Pogba at Burnley. “I told him, ‘If we went to London and you wanted to stay there, that would be one thing. But this is close, it doesn’t make sense’.

“The guy was upset. But then we won the game and he asked me again. Because I was happy, I gave in a little and said, ‘At least leave on the bus and ask your chauffeur to catch up with you 10 minutes from the stadium, then go as you wish’.

“And this guy in the locker-room still wasn’t happy. I went to the press conference and when I arrived at the team bus, parked beside it was a Rolls-Royce with his chauffeur.

“After all, the car was new and His Excellency would like to leave the stadium in his Rolls-Royce. Now how do we deal with this? You [tell him] never go in the Rolls? You can go when I’m happy? Or you solve this thing in another way to get me ‘on vacation’.”

There’s no doubting that Mourinho is bitter, but I can see a great deal of truth in this.

If the manager tells you to hop on the bus with the team, that’s what you do.

I respect Pogba as a player, and on his day he’s a force to be reckoned with, but he is the embodiment of the modern footballer who thinks they deserve special treatment.

Every time he does a dance with Jesse Lingard or Marcus Rashford, Sir Alex Ferguson and the managers of old die a little inside.

Then again, Mourinho himself is a huge fan of drama, and can be as petulant as anyone on his day.

They’re both twats – there, I said it.

[source:telegraph]